Sunday, May 24, 2009

The View From My New Apartment

The new studio and apartment tower are the epitome of 1940s elegance. This is by far the most beautiful place I have lived. And it has a rooftop patio, 12 stories up.

Mt. Saint Helens and Northwest district

Hood

Mt. Adams, peeking over the skyline

Towards sunset

Cities really do breath. All that biomass and machinery suspiring--exchanging oxygen for carbon or vice versa.

Fireworks as the Rose Festival kicks off on Friday night.

Neighboring towers, next day

The West Hills truly are a 3-dimensional labyrinth. Very beautiful to wander in, but if the West Hills fault should ever turn out to be an earthquake producer, this would be an extremely bad place to be in the event of a 6.8 (the fault's theoretical maximum).

Of course my place, about a block off the fault line might, not be much better off, depending on where the rupture took place on this 38-mile boundary. Then there is the eventuality of a 9.5 quake when North America next slides out further over the San Juan Fuca oceanic plate. While the shaking would be greatly reduced this far inland, it could go on for as long as five minutes and produce long-period seismic waves, which might have an adverse effect on the tall towers that normally do so well during earthquakes.